This week focuses on the artists known as Tercerunquinto and their upcoming piece in the exhibition México Inside Out: Themes in Art Since 1990 opening September 15.

Tercerunquinto

MALA MEMORIA, 2013

Prepatory sketch for proposal

Courtesy of the artists and Proyectos Monclava

Tercerunquinto is the three-person collective consisting of Mexican artists Julio Castro Carreón, Gabriel Cazares Salas, and Rolando Flores Tovar. The group, formed in 1996, will install a site-specific sculpture, MALA MEMORIA, 2013, on the east side of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The sculpture is a concrete wall with the letters “Mala Memoria,” which translates in English to “Poor Memory,” carved into it by Mexican migrant workers. According to curator Andrea Karnes, the piece “is used here to suggest an imperfect or hazy memory, or an inadequate ability to retain past information related to history and personal experience. For the artists, the phrase connects on one level to the history of the United States (specifically Texas) and Mexico. In this way, it comments on the geopolitical memory of the two countries and the territorial and political conflicts that have arisen since the late eighteenth century and up to the present day . . . The slightly ambiguous message activates institutional, urban, artistic, municipal, territorial, political, emigrant, and personal interrogation” (“Outside In,” México Inside Out: Themes in Art Since 1990).

Watch this video interview to see the three artists explain the formation and history of their collective as well as their sources of inspiration, materials, and overall creative process. http://vimeo.com/29294278

Independent curator María del Carmen Carrión’s interview with the collective from 2007 illustrates their inclusion of architecture and public spaces in past examples of their work. Tercerunquinto member Rolando Flores is quoted saying that their incorporation of architecture into their art was rooted in “a reflection on space, its typology and nature . . . that led to an obvious link with architecture and construction, and subsequently with urbanism and the management of public spaces.” http://www.latinart.com/transcript.cfm?id=89